364 DEVON GREENERY 



to grow dredge corn. Our host had one field in 

 which peas were also included in the mixture ; and as 

 the peas had gone on growing long past their usual 

 time, the result was a dreadful tangle of twisted 

 vegetation, which would, however, cut up into excellent 

 fodder after the bulk of the corn had been threshed 

 out of it. 



We were in the thick of the apple country; and, 

 though West country orchards are apt to be rough 

 and neglected as compared with the carefully-managed 

 Kentish plantations, the thirty acres or so on this farm 

 were well kept and in good bearing order. They were, 

 as usual in the West, entirely grass orchards of standard 

 trees ; and the same effort was not made to keep them 

 closely grazed as in Kent, where it is said one ought to 

 be able to walk in slippers across an orchard in any 

 weather. Still, our host's trees were young and 

 in vigorous bearing, not the straggling lichen-covered 

 ancients that are all too common in the cider districts. 

 It is a common opinion that many of these old cider 

 apples, with their cheerful names Sops in Wine, 

 Jock o' Sot, Sheep's Nose, Fox Whelp are worn out 

 through continuous asexual propagation by grafts. 

 The evidence seems, however, very doubtful ; for when 

 one can secure some scions from even the most 

 decrepit-looking of the old trees and regraft them on 

 fresh stocks they grow as vigorously and crop as freely 

 as ever they can be supposed to have done in their 

 early prime. It is but a hypothesis that age overtakes 

 the variety, regarding a variety as an individual of 

 which the multitudinous trees that may have been 

 propagated are only parts ; if the variety has only a 

 sound constitution to begin with there seems no limit 

 to the number of times it can be rejuvenated by 

 grafting on to fresh stocks. The Ribston Pippin, so 



